Every Step of the Way
by Monella
Summary: It's a shame that no matter how promising and reassuring courage and love are, there are many things they cannot do. They cannot slow the banging on the door. They cannot render skin bullet proof as her fingers hit the 'mute' button to assure that the sacrifice is heard only when it's gone. Courage is many things, but kind or fair are rarely options.


**Full summary:** It's a shame that no matter how promising and reassuring courage and love are, there are many things they cannot do. They cannot slow the banging on the door, they cannot slow the lies almost too perfectly made. They cannot render skin bullet proof as her fingers hit the 'mute' button to assure that the sacrifice is heard only when it's gone.

Courage is many things, but kind or fair are rarely options.

**Warnings: **Character death and description of blood.

* * *

Courage was never something Jemma Simmons focused on in herself.

Simmons was clever- she was far more than clever and she knew it, her entire life seemingly dedicated to that one fact about herself above anything else. Her hair tightly pulled up and her lips pressed into an almost painfully thin line as her body flinched with every violent hit at the door. Her brain, she had decided back when she was a child being tucked into bed with stories about how the universe was formed, how life evolved and how all things came to an end, was the most important part of her. It was all people ever commented on after all and as such it had to be important.

_(Such a clever little thing, isn't she?)_

When the very first domino fell, way back at the start, perhaps she should have been able to see where things were leading. The first time she had suggested to Fitz they go into the field so they could learn as well as travel, her hands lightly on his wrists as she forced his attention to remain on her and not trying to force the 'Night Night' gun to stay in one piece. She should have seen then that it wasn't a good idea for two people who would never be agent material to be out with agents.

The girl who couldn't lie and the boy who was too stubbornly kind weren't the sort S.H.I.E.L.D could sculpt killers or good little soldiers out of, her excitement simply seeming to cause a resigned shake of Fitz's head as he still didn't try to remove her fleeting touch. Trying to talk him into going because they were a team and teams stuck together.

As he often reminded her at times of pressure- it wasn't as though she hadn't been glued to his side every step of the way as equally as he had been glued to hers. Her there when he accidentally upset some girl he fancied – telling him which flowers would make her heart race and anger fade – and him being there when she needed a shoulder to cry on because she'd caught Jordan cheating on her with her roommate. They came as a package, their files virtually identical, their decisions often influenced by what the other thought despite both being too stubborn to ever want to admit it. Both of them too stubborn to admit a terribly large amount of things, the fact Fitz would come to hers for thanksgiving something born out of the fact there was no need for him to be alone if Jemma was around.

Growing to love the team hadn't been part of the plan.

Dying for the team wasn't part of the plan- yet both seemed inevitable as Simmons shut her eyes to try and steady her trembling hands. Stubborn, clever Simmons, the woman who had assured the team that she would be safe here. That they needed as many hands on-action to rescue those they could the moment she finished untangling whatever had been done to the blood sample that held the key to all of this.

The guards were bound to go after them – the group – than to know that the one cracking into the most important part of the challenge wasn't one of the ones breaking into the lower labs. All the same, she'd barricaded the door as Ward had said, his worried frown briefly seeming relieved that he would be the one with Skye to ensure as she hacked the mainframe she would have protection.

She left the gun they'd left her on the table resting against the bullet proof glass, what once had been the main laboratory on the other side of it. The glass itself the only thing that it appeared the flames had not eaten at, metal and bricks alike seeming crumbled. Something corrosive having eaten away at it to the point Simmons had no doubt the only few scientists that hadn't been devoured whole would still end up on the growing list of names that had met their fates in the place.

What a room to die in, the woman found herself lingering on, fingers faltering over the keys she'd been pressing almost desperately. It was too warm, the heat from the flames seeming to still make the air heavy and thick to breathe despite how long had passed, a sense of hollowness clinging to the room made of whites and glass. Staining and twisting the usual sense of 'science only' that such a room would invoke – the science that had made her feel at home all her life, shielding her from the things she would never understand.

What a room to die in. The desperation from the neighbouring room suffocating even when not looking at it, Simmons' tidy nails tracing over the surface, cold metal offering no reassurance as she steadied herself against it. There was nothing safe or personal about the room, her attention on the slight scratching noise her kitten heels made when she didn't lift her foot right- the hard tiles under her unforgiving to the slightest movement. Camera in the corner still recording despite how terribly pointless it seemed now everything was done. What show was left to watch?

Something told her she didn't want an answer to that.

She had to be brave, hearing the others over the COM talking away when all she wanted to do was tell them to come back. That it was taking longer than it was meant to. That in such a room there was nowhere to hide from the sight of how her barricade was crumbling down, cracking in half with every rushed breath that took too little air into her oddly protesting lungs.

Courage was never something Jemma Simmons focused on in herself and yet it was what she needed the most in that moment. Telling them how close to her the men the other side of the door were getting would put them in danger. Make them come rushing back and neglect those who needed saving. Those attached to a countdown and about to be genetically fried.

It would force them to make a decision they would never be prepared to make. One of their own possibly hundreds of innocents. More if the technology survived.

It was a decision Simmons wasn't prepared to make, silently begging to herself to find the courage she needed.

It's a shame that no matter how promising and reassuring courage and love are, there are many things they cannot do. They cannot slow the banging on the door, they cannot slow the lies almost too perfectly made. They cannot render skin bullet proof as her fingers hit the 'mute' button to assure that the sacrifice is heard only when it's gone.

Courage is many things, but kind or fair are rarely options.

Courage offered her no answers as to what she was meant to do, the voice ringing from the speaker in an increasingly urgent tone.

_(It's a shame.)_

"_Simmons now would be a great time to work it out!"_

"I'm trying! The moment Skye's program unscrambles the coding I can see exactly how the-" How could they not hear the increasingly heavy pounding in the corner of the room? The relentless banging and cracking of the wood she'd used to secure the door… the lingering rhythm that her panicked heart had decided to match in her chest like a trapped hare desperately trying to run for its life. "H-how it can be bypassed without hurting those still attached to the system."

What a room to die in…

Shaking the thought out of her head she paused all the same, fingers of her left hand only briefly moving up to play with the necklace that rested around her slender neck. Using it as a pacifier as she looked at the screen in front of her. She needed at least another ten minutes for the program to finish systematically applying the changes she had made- to apply them.

From the sound of how the doors were inching further apart she doubted she was lucky enough to even have three.

The sharper, colder part of her mind almost found it ironic that this was the one day she'd decided to wear her new blouse, not buttoned right to the collar and at some point her fingers having tugged her pink tie half open in hope of getting more air in.

It was funny. Jumping out of the plane, as terrifying as it had felt, had felt different. Though Jemma had to suppose there weren't many outside of her work environment that could compare facing death experiences. But jumping out of the plane, no matter how horrific it had been, had been to protect her team. She'd had no other choice and as such it had felt almost fair. Despite everything it had been ultimately her decision, blinking damp eyes as she silently pleaded for the numbers on the screen to rise faster.

Jumping out of the plane had felt necessary, almost justifying to the part of her that so desperately didn't want to die. Her life was dedicated to understanding the world around her, craving knowledge about all she loved and loving being able to find out new things.

This though lacked that necessity; it lacked any sense of fulfilment because it wasn't fair. It wasn't the only logical thing to possibly lead to a long-term good solution. But calling for the others would break apart the carefully constructed groups, the sounds of Coulson and May still fighting their way to the deepest section of the building echoing.

Them knowing would only distract them.

Knowing would lead to Fitz trying to get to her, Fitz ending up in the line of fire…

And for Fitz she was a little more prepared to die.

"_Simmons?" _May this time.

How they didn't notice her voice faltering as she shut her eyes again she'd never know, like a chid clinging to the darkness of her own mind to protect herself from the real monsters the harsh light of day would expose to her. Clinging to any security that could slow down the ever increasing weakness in the foundations of her defence. "Yeah?"

_"We're through to the final section." _

At least that was some form of good news, she supposed. "G-great. Skye should be able to open the security latches to get you guys through then the moment the program finishes running Fitz can do his bit." And he needed to be there for that. To make this worth it. To make not pleading for help and what was to come worth anything at all.

"_Now be careful, Simmons. They're bound to have realised part of the programming is coming from there."_

Yes. They were bound to have noticed.

_(Were it not for the blood she'd be pretty.)_

She should have seen how remaining in the lab, on solid and secure ground, would prevent so much red.  
(The body could only lose 40% of it's blood content before the body would no longer be able to compensate, the voice at the back of her head reminded her and _God_ she hated being so painfully aware of what every little stage would entail.)

Simmons should have seen how her determination to put the team's safety first would only lead to pain. How was she supposed to choose between her families? Her mother and father back at home, whose loss of their genius little girl would in one way or another kill them or the family she had made for herself, with her friends and Fitz…

Her friends who could still do so much good if given the opportunity. Time healed all wounds and either way, there was blood on her hands with the decision she was suddenly having to make.

Hopefully the other noises on the line would prevent the two groups from questioning the silence on her end, Simmons ignoring any dampness on her cheeks as she finally added pressure to the mute button. Ensuring that whilst they would be last noises playing in the room they wouldn't have to hear how the crack of her last defence sounded like a breaking spine, Simmons lurching back slightly as her breath hitched.

After Skye had been shot, Simmons had often had nightmares of bullets and gunfire, the first shot going through her upper arm with the same ease as a knife through tracing paper. There was no waking at the agony though, her central point of gravity seeming to move to her knees as she fell with a swift precision.

After jumping from the plane she had often wondered how she was going to die, barely squeaking when the man who'd shot her used her hair to get her back up. Her vision swirling with little grace as she barely heard the second man's words, his looking over her work on the screen too late to make much of a difference.

"Such a clever thing, isn't she?" He observed as turned to face her, giving an overly dramatic sigh. Mockingly tutting as his shoes squeaked whilst he moved closer, nails digging into her jaw to make her look at him. Making her line of vision end on him as the gun she'd pressed was pressed to her gut. "It's a shame for such a mind to have quite such an end. We could have used a clever girl like you around here."

What a room to die in, the pain outmatched by her too fast breathing, heat radiating from her pained body clashing with the too cold floor beneath her. Wet eyes looking with as much hatred as she could manage, not caring to place who spoke next.

"Were it not for the blood she'd be pretty." She could taste iron in her mouth, not having so much as noticed biting through her lip but just about noticing the warm trail on her chin as she clenched her jaw, biting back a pained cry as nails added pressure to where her hand was trying to stop the bleeding.

Such a pointless little reaction, a soft sob leaving her despite her determination as Simmons found herself stumbling upon the deeper realization of quite what her death there would mean.

"Make it a clean shot. Boss wants her somewhat alive when the team find her."

The second shot that rang out in the silence led to the second crack in the glass behind her, the two bullets leaving red stains around them even with how their angles left them so far apart. The damage from one room seeping into the next, staleness of the room completely gone as like a house of cards Simmons crumbled down upon herself.

_(They should get the message.)_

It wasn't meant to be all that hard of a mission, by what it seemed luck each member of the team bringing something vital to it and supposedly making it easier. Each one of them together supposedly evening out the playing ground.

Which made the fact they didn't realise until later, that for being a group so horribly outnumbered, they got through their attackers rather easily.

The moment the coding came through from Simmons there was a burst of relief, what was left to do neither too easy or too hard to cause concern to be raised, Fitz's grin bright at the confirmation from May and Coulson that it had worked, that the countdown had stopped. That those who'd been experimented on were still alive.

Such a success was a rare occurrence, none of them being injured and no unnecessary casualties giving a moment of rare gratefulness that he'd allowed himself to be talked into going into the field with Simmons when she had first decided on what he presumed to be a whim that it would be a good idea. That there was no reason why their love of labs should prevent them from seeing in person all the things and places they had read and speculated about, sometimes sitting together all too late at night and pondering out loud what some areas must be like in real life.

She'd said some things were meant to be experienced in person and not simply through comforting paper, her eyes so bright it had physically hurt him to even consider saying no no matter how every bone in his body argued that it wasn't a good idea.

It would only lead to trouble, two scientists pretending to be any more than inexperienced kids when it came to the real world. When it came to a reality outside of what they knew so well.

"Simmons, we did it!" His joy was bright as he spoke over the intercom, her reaction the only one he couldn't recall hearing. And usually it tended to be the only one he remembered hearing. But the silence felt wrong, May and Coulson too busy to be making much noise, leaving noting replying to him no matter how his smile faltered. "Simmons? This isn't the usual reaction to us doing well…"

He'd been busy when she had been speaking, distraction leading to him not noticing how wrong her tone was, how her stutter seemed to return from her younger days as it did only when pressure got far too much for even her to handle. And that certainly took a lot, the woman pretty much thrived in any pressure because of her enjoyment of proving people wrong. In proving she deserved every bit of the credit she was given.

Silence met him again, and for the third time he faltered, worry growing as the remnants of his smile faded further, his entire body stilling as both Ward and Skye's gazes from the corner of the room noticed it. Watching him with their own concern because like sharks in the water they could all feel something was wrong.

The sound of another intercom connecting was music to his ears as he burst to attention, relaxing at the hope his worry was all for nothing. Of course Simmons was fine, she always was one way or another.

"_Leo."_

It took him less than a heartbeat to sense something was wrong, smug joy fading from his tone as suddenly he spoke as though they were the only two left on the line. "Jemma? Jem, what's wrong?" He truly couldn't remember the last time he'd called her the nickname in public, and in truth it never would matter to him as the sound of her breathing came out all wrong. Irregular and struggled, worn out as if she'd gotten distracted and accidentally ran a mile in the wrong direction.

She took too long to reply, Fitz immersed in the suspension that he didn't notice Skye getting to her feet, laptop being put aside as both agents seemed to bristle like cats hearing the wrong sort of sound at night.

Torn between hissing at the noise and running towards it with no regards as to what came next, simply working out what it had been.

It was funny how clearly the nickname had triggered an effect, Simmon's voice so much weaker than he had heard it since the incident with the virus, his heart sinking at the feeling that much more was wrong than he could begin to understand.

"_I- I'm sorry."_

Two words and Fitz was running for more than his life.

_(Leave that somewhere just out of her reach. Should be amusing to leave them a show when they get here.)_

Jemma had always stated there was a depressing beauty in tragedy- the best poems tended to be the saddest, the darkest thoughts the most lingering. The preservation of nightmares in a person's mind often lasting far, far longer than any decent dreams. Longer than any happy thought.

At the time he had found her oddly amusing, stating that only she could find something beautiful in the most horrible of places.

Much later, Leo Fitz had to wonder if she would have been able to find any beauty in the scene that almost killed him there and then, shattered doors only a taster of all that was to come when he took another step forwards. The room was dark, lights having been switched off simply out of spite towards whoever was to discover the scene left there. To drag out the few painful moments as he turned them back on, stomach twisting and lurching at the sheer amount of red that had chanced a hollow and stale room into ten times more of a nightmare than the burnt remains of its neighbour.

His eyes somehow found the glass wall first, the two bullets lodged deep within it spraying red onto the dark background.

It was hard to find the original white of the floor tiles as he faltered like the frightened child he suddenly felt like, both slender handprints and the markings where she'd had to drag herself to something causing him finally to burst forwards, trying to find any sign of relief in the nightmare he'd just slipped into.

"Leo."

Crying was something he would never be certain when he'd begun doing, memory glitching the next few moments to simply the sensation of his entire body feeling as though it was being pushed through a grinder as his lips moved without his consent. _Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God no_.

She was so limp, so red, he didn't know what to do with his hands- the woman's hand uselessly resting on the bleeding wound on her stomach- the blouse stained red to the point there was no guessing what its original colour had been. Her lips red and her skin too colourless, his larger hand instantly moving to put pressure down despite how the amount of blood alone proved there wasn't much left that her body could possibly lose.

Skye hadn't lost anywhere near as much and she'd been too close of a call, his hand moving to lightly cup her face, cradling her body against his as if protecting her from the sight of the hell her final moments had been made into.

"W-Wha- Oh Jem." He didn't know what to say. He didn't even know where to begin as her all too misting eyes looked nowhere but him. Was that due to exhaustion or simply the fact that for her, at least looking at Leo as the agony of feeling her own heart falter within her chest gave her the illusion that she was dying somewhere safe.

It gave her at least one way to die at home.

" 'm so'ry." Speaking took Jemma more strength than she had ever thought it would, trembling fingers coming to rest on his hand simply at a miss of where else to put them, the dark pink shaping on her cheek something that with time would have developed into a bruise.

"You should be sorry- you should have called us- told us you were hurt-" Rambling at her wasn't going to help, Leo barely knowing how to react when her ruby lips managed to curve a little fondly all the same at his words. At the sound of his voice, the struggle to keep her eyes open quite evident. "Please, please you have to stay awake. They'll be right here, the others will be right here."

Years of being the cross-country champion at his school had gotten him to her first, but all the same what use was he when all he could do was hold her and cry? Desperation leaving his IQ irrelevant because the only thought process going on in his mind was trying to register than he wasn't about to wake up, that there was no beauty in this specific nightmare.

She'd dragged herself to where they'd chucked her com aside, what stamina she had left long since faded as her body slumped against his, the tears that did run along her face barely causing a dent into the red paint that covered her.

"Jem, sweetheart, I need you to focus on me." His gaze only briefly left her as he looked at the door, raising his voice to a shout. "**We need help in here!**"

No, they didn't.

They needed a miracle or some of the serum that had saved both Skye and Coulson. Yet they had neither.

"L-eo." His name was like a taunting prayer on her lips as she looked at him, barely seeming able to see him as her entire body trembled in his arms. "—you. L've."

"It's alright. It's alright. You don't need to say it. Of course I know." Leo soothed as much as he could, voice trembling and cracking under the pressure of reality, the blood that was now covering him something he would have rathered be his own than this. "You've never needed to say it for me to know."

Sweet irony would have it, hours later when he'd been pried from her body, as limp and hollow as she was- eyes as dead as hers- that he only realised then that he'd not taken the opportunity to say it back.

Psychically linked, Skye had once said when regarding their beautifully identical mannerisms.

Perhaps that was why when Jemma died, Fitz might as well have died with her, burnt out to the core as she remained whole to the eye but tainted forever, the two of them two mirrored rooms separated only by the slight detail of which still had a pulse.

What a room to die in, only the smallest curve on Jemma's lips that may have either symbolised relief at not dying alone or a grimace at the fact she would no longer be at Fitz's side for whatever came next.


End file.
